B A S T A R D
Y O K E L
You shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you odd
FLANNERY O’CONNOR
Men Without Women
What with two large
Barns, new garage and
100 acres of woodland behind
Him, Native’s gutted deer is
Hung from the front yard maple
Farmhand
Native is a farmhand
Always has been.
We don’t live that
Far apart, though
We’ve never met —
Rather seen each
Other’s face in a
Group and nodded
Hello. He lives with
His mother, never
Married and the
Last I knew he was
Working near town
Chopping corn and
Haying for a farmer,
Happy enough to do
That for twenty years.
But today I saw Native
On a back road tugging
A baler with an old
Tractor far from town
And that other farm —
It didn’t seem right
Seeing him way over
There, and even in a
Passing truck we were
Able to catch one another’s
Eye and nod. His face
Unshaved. All the fields
Nearby chopped and raked.
Killing in the Farmyard
It is no more than fifteen feet
But you should be closer —
Especially when using scattershot,
And same time in the morning as yesterday
They hear me coming, because then I shot
Their father or brother or uncle and I like
To avoid a face shot as I watch two bolt from
Compost to go under the chicken hut and one
Ditches into a hole without thinking while the
Other — the bigger one — pauses at the wire
Fencing and waits, curious as I am, actually
Turns around and almost sits up prairie dog style
It will have to be a face shot
If I blink — he’s gone
I’ve gotten this far stalking behind
A tree to a chopping stump and raising
Slowly I aim, he’s a dead-duck, and fire
He’s alive but looking at me his eyes are blood
I clean out a shell to reload and
Quickly finish the job
Each shot burns a whistle in the air
Wakes the dog, shakes the chickens, kills a rat
Old Hand
They wanted $100
For an ash pan
Imagine that —
Native took old scrap
Steel roofing and it
Took three hours
To flatten it out
Bend it around
But he made one
Bob Arnold
Yokel
Longhouse
2011
